[NDE] Re: Career in pipe line NDT

[dbohara@mindspring.com]

I used to do similar work myself.  We did magnetic pipe inspection of
oilfield "tubular materials" and pipelines.  A lot of pipeline work is
done by eddy current and ultrasonic these days.  I did my work in
1979-1982 and it was fun.  I did the first real study of large amounts
of data corellating corrosion pitting data with magnetic flux leakage
data.  It was a lot of tedious work, cutting hundreds of pieces of
corroded pipe lengthwise, then measuring corrosion pit info by hand for
tens of thousands of pits.
Later I worked as an engineer on oil drilling rigs so I saw firsthand
the results of NOT testing drillpipe and tubing.  All it takes is one
accident and you could have paid for all your testing for 10 years.
I dunno what the story is now on hydrogen embrittlemt in sour gas well
pipe and tubing but I imagine there are ways to test for it now.  I'd
like to try thermal neutrons for this